[WEB4LIB] Re: Privacy, the USA Patriot Act, electronic fingerprinting to replace library cards etc.

[Karen G. Schneider]

Thought A: Response to Dan (but see Thought B, below)

:Some of that sounds like somebody's creeping featurism because some
:bozo library administrator wanted to know something once. I once had
:someone in another library want a complex analysis of circulation by
:day of week, by time of day, by class number, and by size of book. ...

Not just "somebody..." and not just "once..."

Not too long ago (a year or two?) I recall some library admins
expressing impatience with the privacy-protecting features of online
catalogs (not Jackie, mind you!).  The allure of the sexy bell/whistle
available once a passle of patron info was stored on a quasi-permanent
basis seemed to blind these admins to potential crises.  Those of us
peeping, "but that could be a problem someday" were overlooked as
Pleistocenes unwilling to get hip with the program.  Haven't heard as
much from these folks since we started reading about the USA PATRIOT Act
(which is the FULL name, btw), TIPS, etc. In some ways, the older-guard
admins, with their natural suspicions and their long memories, have been
better curators of patron privacy than their "kewler" counterparts. 

There are indeed some features that are worth some trade-off. Fines, for
example, which go hand-in-hand with helpful notices alerting patrons
that they have overdue books.  As someone who stores library books under
the bed (so handy for late-night reading), I don't object to these
notices... but they do constitute a trade-off...  

Thought B: The USA PATRIOT Act has more--FAR more--significance for
libraries than simply the ramifications for online catalogs and similar
databases.  READ it.  I wrote about this last spring for American
Libraries; Mary Minow has some good stuff out there, as well.  

Me: http://www.ala.org/alonline/netlib/il302.html 

Mary and several more good sites: go to lii.org and type in Patriot Act 

I'm going to write a little more about this Act this summer... but just
a bit of an expansion on this discussion... the USA PATRIOT Act is the
Library Surveillance Program, on steroids and LSD.  Think about roving
wiretaps, the huge expansion of law enforcement capabilities, the gag
orders. If Dan's aforesaid bored library administrator had received the
right type of court order, the FBI could come on site almost
indefinitely based on activities that happened elsewhere (e.g. they
begin tracking someone at home and he starts using the library, and the
wiretap order moves with the suspect!) and with very weak justification
begin monitoring behavior, and require that the aforesaid dim-bulb
administrator not say anything to anyone save his lawyer. Not staff, not
the Library Board, not a letter to Library Journal... 

No, I'm not making this up, and I'm not exaggerating, either.  That's
the law; read it and weep!

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Karen G. Schneider kgs at lii.org  http://lii.org 
Coordinator, Librarians' Index to the Internet
lii.org  New This Week:     http://lii.org/ntw 
      lii.org: Information You Can Trust!
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